The goal of this paper is to analyze parents and students' opinion on both the schooling cycles and the continuous assessment adopted by the Educational Public System of São Paulo City. The research was conducted in two schools during the school year of 2005. The data were collected in the course of weekly visits to both schools as well as from interviews carried out with 28 parents and 28 students from these schools, and, after that, sorted into thematic categories, according to Bardin (2004). The analysis of the data shows that the knowledge the interviewees have about the organization of the educational system in São Paulo city refers to the form of school assessment of students, and that they do not know what schooling cycles are. Most interviewees claimed to be contrary to the continuous assessment because they believe that without annual repetition the students would be promoted without learning and would not study. It was noted that the fact of municipal teaching not be organized in cycles as it had been conceived in the initial proposal influences the opposition from parents and students about continuous assessment.
Schooling cycles; Parents; Students
